I had a conversation with Protesilaos (upstream author) to find out why they packaged separately for elpa. Here are some of the excerpts:
--- Protesilaos Stavrou writes: The reason I created separate packages for those is two-fold: 1. I did not know at the time I started how to use a single template that both themes would share. Now I cannot revert that decision because it would involve re-packaging the themes and then updating all the relevant archives: it would break things. 2. Early feedback I received suggested that users would opt for either one or the other theme. And because one is not a prerequisite for the other, I thought it would be nice not to install extra files. Feel free to package them together, if you want. --- --- Dhavan writes: > The reason I created separate packages for those is two-fold: > > 2. Early feedback I received suggested that users would opt for either > one or the other theme. And because one is not a prerequisite for > the other, I thought it would be nice not to install extra files. > Do you have data if it turned out to be the case after all? Do users actually install only one and not the other? How much does it matter to them? This point was also brought up on Debian Emacsen Team. It is an interesting question! --- --- Protesilaos Stavrou writes: > Do you have data if it turned out to be the case after all? Do users > actually install only one and not the other? How much does it matter to > them? This point was also brought up on Debian Emacsen Team. It is an > interesting question! I have no data. This was anecdotal evidence from a small sample. Not particularly reliable. As such, it is better to put more weight on point 1 I mentioned earlier, namely that I did not know how to use a common template for the two files when I started the project. Melpa has some stats which suggest that a single package would be better: | Theme | Downloads | |----------------+-----------| | Modus Operandi | 25805 | | Modus Vivendi | 25637 | I have had in the back of my mind the idea of a breaking change for version 1.0.0 (now we are at 0.10.0), where the two packages become one and users need to update their sources manually. But I have not thought about the details of such a transition. --- Given these, I think we are safe packaging modus-vivendi and modus-operandi as a single package for Debian. -- D Vaidya
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